It’s been over four months since I was in a car accident that left me with a traumatic brain injury. That brain injury has changed me dramatically in the four months since it happened – from reducing how much I’m able to work, to changing how I can approach hobbies and passions. In that time, I’ve been angry, upset, and challenged my own wellness and healing with self-destructive habits.

However, I’ve also learned to thrive in discomfort. While laying in the dark with a migraine, I started trying to stop dreading this affliction, but thanking it. From that pain and solitude, came gratitude. I’m different, and while I’m not better, I’m better.

I penned this love letter to my brain to try and give us a moment to separate ourselves from a life of self-hate, and revel in a rare moment of desperate self-love. I’m honored that I have this rare opportunity to share it with you.

Dear Max,

You’ve existed in the space between my ears for as long as I have, and our time has not always been well.

You have been sick, and together we have battled demons and ourselves, from fatness to thinnness and compulsion to absorb and repel, we have been through it all.

You are 60% fat, but so are my thighs so I cannot judge. Even though I have.

Dear Meg,

You’re Max when I feel strong, and Meg when I feel stronger. You’re bold and scared and I’m proud of you whether you’re one or the other, or both.

Dear Me,

In 28 years of life we’ve fought both more and less than we deserve. Our beginning made us broken, and for a long time, I thought you were unlovable. I thought we were unlovable and because of that I hated you and your neuro-divergence. I hated that because of you, and your synapses that never quite lined up right, that I would hurt forever, be fucked up forever.

But no matter how much I hurt, you helped me create. I’ve written and drawn and knit since we were young, and it was your left-brained and right-brainedness that made that happen. I love the cards we make to send our loved ones, and the socks we make for ourselves. I love your need to make your presence felt, to be heard – so you weave in your divergence creatively. Nothing is perfect, and nothing can be duplicated – and that’s how you make your presence felt.

In the past four months, you have been hurt and I’ve hurt with you. I’ve spent sleepless nights contemplating the stars, and have woken up screaming with the horrors you create. And yet, I still find the strength to be kind when you ache and hurt – despite the ache and hurt you bring me.

I’ve learned a lot about you in these four months, I’ve learned to love the imperfections you bring to our world. I no longer get frustrated with your inability to move my arm to throw a baseball, that is something you simply do not do well.

But you skate, and you lift, and you make delicate things with my fingers that amaze even me. You do so many things so well and I’ve never simply taken the time to thank you for what you do wonderfully. I’m too busy frustrated with how poorly you forecast the future.

But in our time, in the quiet moments where I’m waiting for sleep, I’ve taken time to thank you, and love you for who you are.

Because you make me who I am. Your ability for kindness astounds me and your depth of emotion rivals oceans. I’ve not yet understood how joy and sadness can coexist, but you do, and you try to show me each time I try to forgive.

I don’t know why you’re my brain, or where you came from. Whether you’re a gift from God, or a wonderful gift of a chance from the cosmos, you’re mine and you can only be mine.I have spent too much time hating you for the gift you were instead of adoring you for the chaos that you are.

In these past four months I have learned that our time together is not only delicately maintained, but injuriously short. A time will come where you will return to where you came from, and then it will no longer be you and I, but you….and I.

But until that day comes, I will love you with all that I have, and for all that you are. My brain, my soul, my life.